Monday, March 12, 2007

Des Moines Register reported Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on Sunday told a small group of Iowa Democrats that U.S. policy in the Middle East can be compassionate as well as tough - while he also provided these influential voices in the leadoff caucus state with an up-close view of him as a presidential candidate.

Obama told the Muscatine-area party activists that he supports relaxing restrictions on aid to the Palestinian people. He said they have suffered the most as a result of stalled peace efforts with Israel.

What about the Israeli citizens killed by rockets launched from two large synagogues in the Gaza settlements that they turned over to the Palestinians to see if they really deserved a state of their own, only to see those synagogues used as rocket launch sites, and the the high-tech greenhouses built by Israelis, that formerly provided employment for many Palestinians, have been looted, burned, and turned into cover for weapons smuggling tunnels.

"Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," Obama said while on the final leg of his weekend trip to eastern Iowa.

"If we could get some movement among Palestinian leadership, what I'd like to see is a loosening up of some of the restrictions on providing aid directly to the Palestinian people," he added.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas rejected on Monday criticism by al Qaeda's second-in-command and said it was still committed to Israel's destruction despite a ower-sharing deal with the Fatah faction. Is that what you mean by movement?